Trip report: DCA-BNE

Bag drop seems closed when I walk up to it in Ronald Reagan Airport, with ribbons closing it off. The guy looking at one of the machines turns to look at me as if I’m an idiot. “Han DelDown and undatha ROAP!” he gabbles at me, then helpfully repeats the instruction. Oh, so it isn’t closed at all. He just wants me to put the handle down, and push it under the rope. So I do.

I give my passport to the TSA agent. She looks at it. “Gedafota”, she says. After repeating it she points at the camera. Ah, she wants me to get a photograph taken. I do that. Then, similarly devoid of enthusiasm or any facial expression, she says “Habbagudwon” and points one finger into the sky. I look quizzically at her. “Habbagudwon!” she says, pointing again, more urgently. This, I now know, appears to be American for “Thank you, sir, your passport checks out and you may now advance in this queue towards the next linguistic challenge”.

I headed to the American Airlines lounge. It’s small and quite old-fashioned, but I asked whether there was anywhere quiet to do some work (“I have quite a long call and I don’t want to annoy anyone”) and was pointed into a room with work “carrels”, and in case you think I’m misunderstanding the man who showed me, it said so on the sign. This was in dark brown 1980’s wood, with a few places that included telephone points - I think they were telephone booths when this place was built. I settle down with a beer - it was a two hour long podcast appearance, so was a really long call. But the wifi worked after I managed to log in, so all was good.

I’d turned up early to do that podcast, so when we finished, I went out of the lounge again, to discover the secret: DCA has two lounges. One is a dark, 1980s place, with telephone booths, a scruffy bar, and some packets of pretzels. And one is three minutes walk away, bright and light and modern and excellent and fresh food. I find the latter one.

(In both cases, “what are you on Qantas” is asked when entering the lounge. My AA boarding pass says I’m Emerald, but that isn’t enough for either of the AA team who want to look at something from Qantas saying that. The digital card sufficed - I don’t have a physical card, never having needed one.)

The AA flight is OK. My seat smelt of wee, but as far as I could tell was not damp, so it might have been old wee or it might have been the old lady sitting next to me. The difference between my earlier flight with Alaska and AA appears to be that a) you get two sets of soft drinks service on AA; and b) your travelling neighbour smells slightly of wee rather than strongly of cannabis.

No IFE, but it offered free wifi for 20 minutes if you watched an ad, which I thought was a good idea, and some live TV including CNN, featuring a whole hour of Anderson Cooper in a half-screen looking at the camera with the same expression of someone really trying very hard to understand something.

The AA flight lands 40 minutes early, which is impressive. It was a 24 minute walk from terminal 5 to the Qantas First lounge, but I’ve done this enough to know where to go. I’ve also done this enough to know where to plug in my devices to recharge in a place that I can see from a dinner table. The chicken tacos were OK (I’d have added a squeeze of lime), I noted a distinct lack of any Australian beer on the new menu (what did craft beer do to hurt you, Qantas?) and it wasn’t long before we were called for the flight.

The Qantas flight was from gate 135, a new random gate down a small passageway in LAX that I’d not seen before. I’d got a text earlier saying “no, no points upgrade for you”, so I was resigned to my usual economy seat, but I got the best upgrade - the unexpected one at the gate, so that’s nice. 3E will be my home for 14 hours, for 98,100 points, which is slightly less than three toasters.

This flight has a pre-order form for breakfast, which I fill in using the Yoghurt Hack. You can order yoghurt. It comes as a large lump of Greek yoghurt in a bowl. It’s very bland. Underneath, tick “honey” as your accompaniment to toast, and write “for the yoghurt!” next to it. Then order your toast and Vegemite as normal. It works, and means the yoghurt is a sweet delicious nice thing.

For dinner first, I order the fish, but “none left, sir, they only gave us four”, so I order the random “plant-based” rigatoni, which is drizzled in Neil Perry’s milky liquid. It might have been nice if the pasta was cooked properly.

For a drink, I ask for beer - which, as ever, terrifies the FA serving me, since it’s obvious that Qantas gives no training about how beer works. He rushes off and brings back the three “Australian” beers - a Hahn, a James Boags, and the Little Creatures Pacific Ale, Qantas’s choice for the last decade. I plump for the Pacific Ale and he says… “do you want some ice in that?”

Ice. In beer.

Ice.

Of course I do not want ice in my beer. Yes, agreed, this beer is not chilled, and it should be, but no, I do not want ice in my beer.

Qantas, this isn’t hard.

A cheese board later (with a dessert wine that came with all the faux theatre of showing me the bottle like a proud daddy, then scuttling away to pour it) and I slept. A lot.

Breakfast was a decent affair. No wallpaper-paste-based Vanessa’s Breakfast here (though since this is US-catered, you’d hope so); the bacon was almost too thick, but everything was decent enough.

We land, 40 minutes early. I think we’re the first plane in, as normal, and I was home for 6am.

It turns out that these flights were double-status-credits flights, so I’ve now prequalified for Platinum for next year. I’m rapidly falling out of love with Qantas as an airline: much of that is the lack of wifi on international flights which I’d perfectly happily pay for, and a general feeling of lack of investment in the experience. My next few long distance flights will be with Air New Zealand and a number with Emirates. No chance of an upgrade with any of these: but it will be nice for a change.